


We do not suffer by accident

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Actors, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Car Accidents, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, The Libertines - Freeform, a little backstory for good measure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Sam takes a turn as an actor.
Relationships: Debbie Eagan & Ruth Wilder, Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Kudos: 11





	We do not suffer by accident

Thank God he’d gone straight home, instead of stopping at a different bar for a Scotch or the diner to get a cup of coffee. He’d puttered around in a way he never did in front of Justine, eating a hastily prepared sandwich that he didn’t finish, unable to settle to read the paper, finally taking a long shower, thinking of nothing but Ruth’s mouth under his, her body pressed against him, the silkiness of the skin of her throat, the scent of her perfume, her breath. Her devastated gaze. The phone ringing and refusing to stop was what made him get out, quickly toweling off his head and wrapping the damp terrycloth around his hips, muttering _hold your goddamn fucking horses_ as he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Sam, thank goodness—” Debbie began, probably all spun up with some new fucking plan she’d need him to rubber-stamp so she could two-against-one Bash as if Bash cared about Sam’s opinions since he’d left Vegas. Hell, since they’d left the gym in LA.

“This couldn’t wait ‘til morning? Like a fucking reasonable hour for doing business, Debbie?”

“It’s Ruth,” she said.

“I don’t know what she told you, but that’s between her and me,” he said.

“She was in a car accident, she’s in the hospital, outside LA. Her parents can’t get in for at least six hours, they’re frantic, and you’re the one closest to her,” Debbie said. She couldn’t know how her words were like a goddamn bayonet; she didn’t and he wasn’t going to say fuck-all about it.

“She’s okay?” he asked, remembering her face as he’d stalked over to his Cadillac, that imperious tilt of her chin a la Zoya, designed to hide any trembling. They’d both known it and he hadn’t had a charitable thought as he’d noticed. Until that last moment when the steel door shut, he’d expected her to get into the passenger seat. He’d boxed himself in, he’d had to drive away. He’d told herself she was a big girl and could get herself back to Vegas just fine. He wasn’t abandoning her on the sidewalk like the fucking Little Matchstick Girl.

“No. I don’t think so. They haven’t said much, just, she was just out of surgery, her parents told me,” Debbie said. 

“I can go,” Sam said. 

“Good. Okay. Call me when you know anything. I haven’t told anyone here, there’s already some stuff going on and until we know how Ruth is—”

“Got it. Bye,” he said, cutting her off and hanging up the phone with a clatter.

He got dressed in roughly twelve seconds, putting on whatever was nearest. He scribbled a note for Justine _Had to run, Ruth in hospital_ , scrawling _Sam_ before he thought he maybe should have signed Dad. The drive itself had the pulled-taffy timescale of a nightmare; he drove as quickly as he dared, never seeming to get any closer to his destination, hearing Ruth’s voice in his mind. He tried to turn on the radio but that was worse. He ended up muttering the rosary under his breath, remembering his Noni and how she’d paused before beginning again. In that pause was Ruth’s name, Ruth’s eyes, Ruth’s hand taking a hold of his wrist.

He parked in the visitors’ lot, which seemed like it was a million miles away, because there hadn’t been any signs about valet; he ran in, feeling his heart pounding in his chest as if it could run faster if he’d just let it loose. He went in through the doors marked Emergency Room, because it was bright and someone there would tell him what to do and where the fuck else was he supposed to go? The pink-scrubbed, pink-cheeked woman at the front desk looked completely unimpressed by his entry but not necessarily unkind.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” he said, panted really, making a superhuman effort to speak normally, when normal might as well be on fucking Neptune. “I’m looking for a patient, Ruth Wilder. I got a call.”

“Cheryl, that was that tee-boned MVA,” another woman’s voice called out. 

“And you are?” presumably-Cheryl asked.

“Her husband. Her parents are coming in too, but they’re hours out, coming in from Omaha,” Sam said, marrying the lie with the truth. He would not entertain for even a second that they might not let him up to see her.

“Okay. Hang on a sec, I’ll see where they put her,” Cheryl mercifully responded. Sam’s thankfulness lasted for about two seconds, then his desperation reasserted itself as it seemed to take an eon for Cheryl to fucking find Ruth in her stupid database.

“Looks like she’s on 6. Or will be—could still be in recovery after the OR. Here’s a visitor tag, take the elevator over there, then head to the nurses’ station. Someone’ll help you find her,” Cheryl said, offering a sticker labelled VISITOR in a bold font and pointing at an elevator bay across the hall. 

The stairs might well have been faster than the elevator, but Sam knew the adrenaline and exercise could well lead to another cardiac event of his own and he was here for Ruth. He had to be ready to give her whatever she needed, not to be carted off to another floor for his own work-up. The insight didn’t stop his foot from tapping impatiently the whole ride up. The nurses’ station was at least right around the corner from the bank of elevators and a woman in green scrubs looked moderately interested in his approach.

“They told me I could find her here, Ruth Wilder,” he said. “She was in an accident.”

“And you’re?” 

“Her husband,” he said, the falsehood coming easier this time. He’d just have to remember not to believe it. “Her parents are on their way too.”

“You can go in and sit with her, but she’s still pretty much out, from the surgery. I’m Lara, by the way. Kim’s her nurse but she’s on a break now. Ruth is in room 617, I’ll take you.”

The room looked like his had, but it was filled with more equipment, more cords and wires, machines whirring and flickering, all in service of the woman in the bed. He knew Ruth was petite—he’d just held her in his arms a few hours ago and he’d had plenty of opportunity to see her slender form as she dashed across the ring in her Zoya costume, which left nothing (and everything) to the imagination, but she’d never seemed small. Fragile, the way she looked now, her face abstracted in the drugged sleep the anesthesiologist had given her, a pale blue blanket loosely tucked around her. Her chestnut hair was dark, colorless against the pillow, and she was so still, Ruth who was always the most vital, organizing force in any room. Even when she chose to be quiet, her decision was palpable, at least to him.

“Do you know what happened to her?” he heard himself ask. He had never been more terrified to hear a response.

“Well, she got tee-boned by a pick-up,” Lara said. “Drunk driver, blew through the light, according to the EMT.”

“I mean, her injuries, if she’d going to be okay,” he said. He clenched one hand in a fist, not sure who exactly it was he wanted to beat to a fucking, bloody paste—the drunk pick-up driver or himself.

“They thought she could come to us and not the SICU, the surgical intensive care, so that’s a good sign. She’s got some fractured ribs, arm, and her pelvis, and she had a lot of internal bleeding but they managed to keep her from coding in the ambulance. She’s already gotten some transfusions. Concussion, but no major head trauma, which is also good,” she explained, giving him a smile at the end as if that would cheer him up. Or make what she had just said sound even marginally fucking better.

“How do you know there’s no head trauma?” he said. Ruth’s car was a piece of shit on a good day, no match for a truck driven with a whiskey lead foot. He saw her delicate profile against the window, the curve of her cheek, the way her lashes dropped when she was lost in thought.

“Neuro checked her over and she was conscious when she came in. You’re Sam, right?” Lara said. He nodded. “She was asking for you. A lot.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered. He remembered what she’d sounded like when Debbie broke her ankle. How strained her voice had been a few hours ago when he’d told her she wasn’t getting the part, when he’d yelled at her and walked away. Stalked, insulted at her suggestion that he just wanted to fuck her, too goddamn selfish to let her hurt feelings have center-stage. It was enough fodder for his fucking brain to imagine her calling out for him, calling and crying when he didn’t come. _Sam, Sam!_

“Yeah, she was pretty insistent. It’s a good sign,” Lara reassured him. Might have helped if he weren’t already consumed with guilt. “Bet she’ll be happy to see you when she wakes all the way up. Even before, you can talk to her, let her hear the sound of your voice. And, you know, as long as you’re careful, it’s okay to hold her right hand. The left is splinted. Kim will look in on her as soon as she’s off her break and the team will be rounding the morning.”

“Thanks,” Sam said as Lara left the room. He dropped into the chair near the right side of the bed and with the greatest care, took Ruth’s right hand in both of his, feeling how finely made she was. She was breathing easily, but he’d never seen her so pale before. How much blood had she lost? How close had he come to losing her-- forever?

“Fuck, Ruth. I’m so sorry,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that he wouldn’t wake her, if that were even possible. But maybe she’d hear what she needed to anyway. “I’m so fucking sorry I left you. I’m here now, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Your parents are coming, which’ll be the worst fucking way in the history of the fucking world for me to meet them, but it’ll be okay. I love you.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop forward, taking a long breath to keep from sobbing. The ugly sight of him broken down in tears was the last fucking thing she needed to see.

“Say that last part again,” Ruth said, a little raspy, catching him off-guard.

“Jesus, you’re awake—does anything hurt? I can get the nurse—”

“That’s not what you said,” she corrected him, turning her face just that much more towards his. Her eyes were such a dark blue, drowsy, the accident, the pain and the drugs having driven out her earlier devastation. Or maybe it was that after abandoning her on the street, he was actually there.

“I love you,” he said. “Holy fuck, Ruth, but I love you. I’m so sorry I didn’t come back before.”

“S’okay,” she said. 

“No, it’s not but even I’m not such a huge fucking dickhead to argue with a woman in a hospital bed,” he said, which got her to smile. 

“I guess that’s the silver lining of being here,” she said. “Sam, I don’t even know, what’s wrong with me? It’s all blurry before.”

“The nurse said broken arm and ribs, you fractured your pelvis, lost a lot of blood. Concussion. I haven’t talked with the surgeon yet,” he said. “Your mom and dad are coming.”

“I’m glad you’re here first. Now,” she said. “I’m sorry about what I said before, when we argued.”

“Shit, Ruth, you don’t have to apologize for that. For anything,” he said, reaching over to touch her cheek, because holding her hand wasn’t anywhere close to enough. 

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, you don’t have to right this fucking minute,” he said. “If you really feel like talking now, you should tell me your parents’ names. All I know is your dad is a high school science teacher, which means he probably knows how to fucking blow me up with some baking soda and bleach.”

“Albert, but he goes by Bert. And Gretchen. Very Midwest, I know.”

“Are they going to be shocked to find me here?” he asked. He imagined Debbie might have said something to them, but he wasn’t sure Ruth had ever mentioned him before. 

“I don’t think so. They know we’re friends, that I care about you,” she said softly.

“You told them that?”

“More or less—we don’t talk about feelings so much. They know what I sound like when something—when someone’s important to me,” she said.

“Like Strindberg,” Sam said.

“Not like Strindberg. More,” she said, giving him a very small smile. “Sam, how’d you get the hospital staff to let you up here?”

“Lying. I said I was your husband,” he answered. “I just needed to fucking be here for you, Ruth. I couldn’t take the chance they wouldn’t let me up.”

“Keep lying,” she said. It was the most Ruth thing she could have said, an actor even when she was broken, when someone else’s blood was what kept her alive. “Sometimes it’s better than the truth.”

“Okay. I think you should rest now. I’ll be here when you wake up, sweetheart,” he said, trying out the endearment, finding it could mean something even when he wasn’t being a sarcastic asshole. He didn’t say sometimes the truth began in lies or that he wanted it to. He leaned over to kiss her forehead, the first kiss he’d ever given that had nothing in it of lust, only an overwhelming tenderness. She needed to sleep and to dream. He’d wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jane Austen.


End file.
